


Past the Last Exit

by Annakovsky



Series: Hand in Unlovable Hand [2]
Category: Veep
Genre: Babies, F/M, Fake Marriage, Marriage, Marriage of Convenience, Pregnancy, Pregnant Sex, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-06
Updated: 2014-07-06
Packaged: 2018-02-07 18:54:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1909965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annakovsky/pseuds/Annakovsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once you're accidentally married for political expediency, accidentally having a baby for political expediency is just the next logical step.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to [Hand in Unlovable Hand](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1099818). Thanks to [tearupthesky](http://archiveofourown.org/users/tearupthesky/pseuds/tearupthesky) for beta/encouragement.
> 
> This is a sequel to a fic written between seasons 2 and 3 (and most of it was also written before season 3), so it veers off from canon there, more or less.

"Would it kill you to put your fucking dishes in the fucking dishwasher just once in your life?" Dan says, putting Amy's coffee-stained mug in the top rack with a little more force than is strictly necessary.

Amy rolls her eyes, not even looking up from her phone as she walks across the room to where her bag is. "Aww, but then I'd rob you of the fun of nagging me fucking constantly," she says, starting to somehow pack up her bag while only half looking at it. "Goddammit, did you see this rumor about Chung's campaign? If that asshole screws us one more time, I swear to God."

"Fuck Chung, who gives a shit," Dan says, flipping the french toast on the skillet. "He's five points down."

"Oh," Amy says, head coming up. "Hey. Rent's due today. Did you put your share in the joint account?" That fucking joint account, making their lives difficult. They basically just use it to keep up appearances for the landlord and whoever else might sell the story to the tabloids if they figure out that Dan and Amy are only fake-married. But it's a pain in the ass that they both have to remember to transfer money over from their real accounts every month.

"Yeah, did it Monday," Dan says, nudging at the french toast idly to see if it's done. The two of them have settled down into a real fake-married routine -- Dan thinks of her mostly as his annoying, career-helping roommate, her makeup taking up all the sink space, the two of them negotiating utility payments, him putting his arm around her to pretend to be happily married in public. Occasionally fucking when Amy needs to let off some steam. You know, normal roommate stuff like that.

He slides the french toast onto a plate. "Breakfast's ready."

It takes Amy a second to drag her attention away from whatever blog she's looking at. "What?" she says. "Why are you cooking?"

Dan waves his own phone at her. "Instagram calls." Amy groans, and he shakes his head at her. "We're the Facebook generation of politicians, Ames, do you want to get elected or not? Sit over there at the table, the light coming in the window will look good. Really wholesome and shit."

"Oh, Jesus," Amy says. She always looks so pained when he does this, even though he's doing it for _her_ fucking career. She takes the plate out of his hand like it's the worst chore ever imagined, and begrudgingly goes to sit at the table.

"Okay," Dan says, holding up his phone, figuring out the best angle to catch the light in Amy's hair. "Try to look like you're happily married, not a constipated old maid. I know that won't be easy."

Amy makes a face at him right as he takes the picture, so he makes her take a couple more, her smiling all fake and bright. "Please don't put some piece-of-shit hashtag on that where you brag about what a great husband you are," she says when he's finally satisfied.

"Of course not," Dan says, flipping through the pictures to try to find the best one. "It's going on your account. _You're_ going to brag about what a great husband I am. Hashtag the best hubbies make breakfast, am I right?"

Amy rubs her forehead like her head is starting to ache. "You're making me insufferable," she says, but she picks up her fork and starts eating the french toast like he knew she would. She's a sucker for french toast. "How is that asshole persona you're creating for me ever going to get elected?"

"People love it," Dan says vaguely. It's weird -- looking through the pictures, the one where Amy's making a face at him, all annoyed and hateful, actually looks the cutest. She's kind of suppressing a smile, all sassy and adorable, and it's strange that he didn't notice that when she was actually doing it. But photos are weird, always distorting things a little -- it probably just caught her mid-glare in some bizarre way.

He uploads that one anyway. Hashtag crazy in love. It gets 357 likes in the first five minutes it's up.

**

"Take off your pants," Amy says as she marches in the front door of their apartment.

Dan's on the couch with his shoes off and his feet on the coffee table, editing the latest draft of Amy's autobiography, putting the final touches on the chapter he wrote about succeeding against the odds as a strong woman in a man's world. He raises an eyebrow at her. "Hi, honey, I'm home?" he suggests as an alternative, more polite greeting.

She rolls her eyes, kicking off her heels and starting to unbutton her blouse. "Hi, honey, take off your fucking pants," she says in a sweet sing-song.

More and more skin is showing, and Dan's dick is getting interested in spite of himself. He sighs and puts his laptop aside to do as he's told. "Meeting went well?" he says. They must've gotten the Republicans to agree to the budget compromise -- Amy's always horniest when she's just fucked over some assholes, high on her own power.

"We gave them 2% on NEA and they accepted our Medicare proposal," Amy says, smirking a little.

"Shit," Dan says. That's taking them to the cleaners, all right, no wonder she's horny. He'd have liked to see that -- he gets this image of her in front of a room full of gray-faced old men in her jacket and pencil skirt, all buttoned-up and forceful, making them take the budget she wanted. His dick's suddenly twice as hard, and Amy looks like she knows it, looking him up and down as she walks to the couch, her hips swaying. Shit, his life is great sometimes.

**

Afterwards, Amy slumps onto the couch beside him with a groan, sliding so she's lying sideways on the cushions with her feet still in Dan's lap. Dan rests his hand on her ankle, her skin warm under his palm, stroking over the swell of her ankle bone.

"Liking this six straight weeks of sex," Dan says.

Amy blinks at him mid-stretch, her back arching, boobs pink and flushed and drawing his eyes. She smirks as she sees him looking. "What do you mean?" she says, like she genuinely has no idea what he's talking about.

"No, just, you haven't gotten your period for six weeks," Dan says. "It's great."

"Yes, I have," Amy starts, but then trails off, staring off into space like she's thinking about it and thinking he might be right.

"No, I swear," Dan says, fumbling for his phone and finding the app. "Last one started on… January 8th."

"Oh my God," Amy says in horror. "You're tracking my period?" She grabs the phone out of his hand and stares at him, then the app.

"Well, it's an app," Dan says. "And I prefer to think of it as tracking when you won't let me bang you. Which is ridiculous, by the way."

But Amy's not listening to him -- instead she's counting on her fingers and muttering to herself. "Shit," she says. " _Shit_. I'm never late. Fuck, shit, _fuck_."

It is slowly, with a building of dread in his stomach, starting to dawn on Dan why her period being late might make Amy panicky. "Wait, shit!" he says. "Are you saying you might be pregnant?"

She gives him a look like he's the dumbest person she's ever met.

"But -- wait," he says. "You're on the pill! Can't it just be late because of, you know, stress, or exercising too much or something?"

"Or because I'm fucking pregnant!" she says, and hits him on the chest, hard.

"Ow!" he says. "Jesus!" That really hurt, fuck. How can such a tiny person hit so hard?

"Why did you fuck me without a condom after Selina's inauguration?!" Amy says, like it was his idea and she wasn't the one who told him to stop being a pussy and just fuck her already when he was trying to find one.

"Jesus, you're on birth control!" Dan says. "How can you be pregnant?!"

She gives him another one of those looks like he doesn't know anything about the female reproductive system, and puts her head in her hands to give a muffled scream.

"Fuck!" Dan says. "You have to take that shit at the same time every day, not three hours late half the time because you had a breakfast meeting with the House Majority Leader, Amy! Goddammit!"

Just, shit. This is _not_ in their timeline -- he hasn't even started to try to talk Amy into having a baby for the publicity yet, and he knows Amy hadn't planned on kids at all. Fuck, they're screwed.

Amy grabs Dan's pants and throws them at him, grabbing for the rest of his clothes as the pants hit him in the face. "Hey!" Dan says. That smarts, and what the fuck -- is she kicking him out? He lives here too, goddammit -- she can't kick him out just because he _might_ have knocked her up. "What the fuck?"

"You have to go buy a shitload of pregnancy tests," Amy says.

"Now?" Dan says. It's after ten -- come on, Amy.

"Yes, now!" Amy says. "Oh my God. Oh my Goddddddd." She's put her head back in her hands now and looks like she's on the verge of screaming into a pillow.

Dan starts begrudgingly getting dressed.

"Wear a baseball cap," Amy says. "I don't need you getting recognized."

Wait, though -- buying pregnancy tests for his wife, isn't that the kind of romantic bullshit people love? Every single interview they do lately involves asking them when they're going to have kids, and they haven't started a good rumor about themselves in awhile now.

Amy must see his thinking in his face because she points at him and says, "No. Not until we know what we're doing about it. If you leak this, I swear I'll murder you."

"You're such a fucking killjoy," Dan says, but he goes to find a ballcap.

**

She's pregnant. Four tests come back positive before Amy believes it, and she's still peeing on a fifth audibly hoping to God they're all false positives when Dan groans from where he's sitting on the floor of the bathroom. "Oh my God, accept it," he says. "You're pregnant."

"Not necessarily," Amy says. She sets the fifth stick on the sink and Dan clicks the timer on his phone. They sit there for the fifth longest minute of Dan's life, and when the phone beeps, Amy looks at the test and groans.

"Yeah," Dan says. "Told you."

"Shit, well, whatever," Amy says, sitting back down on the now-closed lid of the toilet. "I'll just abort it. It's fine."

Dan raises his eyebrow at her, trying to envision the abortion clinic staff who wouldn't sell their story to the Post the second Amy tries to run for president. They're way too visible now that Amy's the female chief-of-staff to the first female president -- she was on Dateline last week. There were jokes about how hot she is in Fallon's Tonight Show monologues three nights this week, for fuck's sake.

"Oh God," Amy says, dropping her head to her hands. "Maybe we can go overseas?" She sounds like she knows that that won't work either.

"Look on the bright side," Dan says. "A baby's great for photo ops."

"Fuck you," Amy says, throwing one of the pee-soaked tests at him, which he barely fends off. Seriously, what is with the physical abuse today? "You don't have to push it out of your vagina."

"Yeah, but that's what epidurals are for," Dan says. "And hey, think how many interviews you can give about how you're balancing motherhood and your career. Voters love that shit."

Amy glares at him. "Oh yeah? And just how _am_ I going to balance motherhood and my career, Dan?"

She looks like she thinks this is actually a major problem -- seriously? "Nannies," Dan says, like, um, obviously -- she didn't think she was actually going to have to raise the kid, did she? "You think Selina actually changed any fucking diapers?"

For a second, Amy looks like she's wavering in her conviction that this is terrible, but then she groans again, rubbing her forehead with her hand like she's getting a headache. "Jesus, this is going to be so fucking expensive."

That's Amy, finding the cloud in every silver lining. Dan laughs and starts pushing himself up off the floor -- this tile is really uncomfortable. "Two-income household," he says, offering her a hand. "We'll be fine." Guess they'll be using that joint account a little more often now, but whatever.

Amy makes a face at him, but lets him help her up. "And don't you dare try to make me move to the suburbs where housing is cheaper," she says. "I don't want to hear a word about good school districts."

"Do I look like I want to move to the fucking suburbs?" Dan says. "Jesus, Amy." They're headed towards their bedroom, since it's after midnight at this point, but at the doorway Amy turns like she's going to shut the door on him. "Hey, watch it," Dan says, having to put his hand out to keep it from hitting him in the face.

"Uh, where do you think you're going?" Amy says.

"Um… bed?" Dan says.

"Your room is down the hall," Amy says, and for a second Dan draws a blank until he remembers that when they officially gave up their own places and moved in here for real, they had said that the guest room would be his room. But he hasn't slept in there for four months at least, and is she fucking serious?

"Are you fucking serious?" Dan says. "Uh, you're already pregnant, I think the damage is done."

"Down the hall!" Amy says, plants her hand in his chest, physically pushes him out of their room, and shuts the door in his face.

Yeah, _right_. Dan rolls his eyes at the door and says, in a raised voice, "Fine, but don't expect me to fuck you in the morning then!" Amy is always horniest in the mornings -- he's usually barely awake before she's throwing herself at him.

"FINE WITH ME," Amy yells from inside the room. Please, she's in such denial. They'll see who cracks first.

**

She cracks first, obviously, when she finally gives in to the reality that she's going to have to have this baby and needs to blow off her aggravation at that fact by dragging Dan to bed. It actually took two weeks, which is longer than Dan was expecting, but whatever, at least she's facing facts. Having an abortion when she's allegedly happily married and in her thirties is just not something that is going to play, and there's no way to guarantee it wouldn't get out. So it's have the baby or kiss being president goodbye, the baby a tiny, embryonic hostage-taker.

But even when she's grudgingly agreed she has to keep it, she makes Dan promise they'll have enough nannies she'll never have to deal with it. "God, relax," Dan finally says. "Even if the nanny's off, I can just take care of it myself. You'll never have to change a diaper, I promise."

Amy gives him the most dubious, disbelieving look she's ever given him, so over-the-top it's almost cartoonish. "Yeah, _right_ ," she says, rolling her eyes. They've crawled under the covers, sweaty and mussed, her lying on her side facing him, so the expression looks even weirder.

"What, 'yeah right'," Dan says. "I can change diapers. And I'm more on board with the baby than you are."

Amy's eyes narrow. "Yeah, what's that about, anyway?" she says. "Since when do you want a baby?"

For a second Dan's a little taken aback -- he hadn't put it to himself quite so baldly. "I don't want a baby," he says blankly. "I want…."

When he trails off, Amy finishes with, "A photo op?"

He guesses that is what he's been picturing whenever he thinks about this kid -- the People Magazine spread of him and Amy and a little dark-haired boy who looks like a miniature Dan, the three of them all Norman Rockwell. So much more presidential to have a kid or two anyway -- and also, a kid means Amy can't jettison him nearly as easily. His own career trajectory right now relies on staying hitched to Amy's star; the whole thing's for nothing if Amy divorces him before she's elected president and they just go their separate ways like the whole thing never happened. This kid is his insurance policy, fastening him to Amy inescapably for the rest of their lives.

So yeah -- it's not that he wants a baby. He hates kids, and babies are just smaller, more unreasonable, screaming kids that shit all over themselves. The fact that he's secretly kind of excited about this pregnancy doesn't have anything to do with wanting a baby.

"Yeah, exactly," he says -- better that Amy think he's in it for the publicity than that he's into this because a baby ties him to her for life. He feels like that might upset her. "And that reminds me, I think we should draft up a press release. We could get a cover in some chick magazine, Good Housekeeping, whatever. Put it out there and take control of the story before anybody figures it out on their own."

"C'mon, it's still the first trimester," Amy says, groaning. "Be optimistic. I could still have a miscarriage."

Dan rolls his eyes at her. "Don't say that shit in public," he says. "Try to act maternal, all right? Or at least not like someone who's going to drown the kid in a bathtub?"

Amy makes a face at him. "I'm not an idiot," she says. "Besides, I know I'm the one who has to make sure you don't turn it into a serial killer."

Dan snorts. "Please," he says. "I wouldn't do that. It would look terrible in the press."

Amy rolls her eyes again. "Jesus Christ," she says. "You're such a sociopath, acting like this kid is some narrative angle. That's a great way to think of your child."

Dan grins at her, slipping his hand over to rest on her stomach, eyes flicking down to her breasts.

"Ugh," Amy says. "Don't get all weird and possessive just because I said it's your stupid kid."

Dan grins a little wider -- Amy only gets that particular annoyed tone in her voice when she's getting turned on and is mad about it. "Yeah, it is," he says, flexing his fingers on her stomach. "I knocked you up and pretty soon everybody who looks at you is going to know we're fucking." He knows the baby's, like, miniscule right now, and Amy's stomach's still flat, but somehow it's getting him worked up to be touching her there anyway. He moves his hand a little lower, so his fingers are almost brushing her pubes, resting on the hot skin of her belly.

He feels her shiver, which as usual coincides with her frowning harder, always so furious she's attracted to him. "Shut up," she says. "Acting like your dick is magic."

Dan grins at her and slips his hand between her legs, watching her bite her bottom lip, her spreading her legs so he can slide his fingers between her folds. She's still wet from the sex earlier, him coming inside her because another great thing about her being pregnant is there's no point in using a condom anymore, and feeling her all slick and messy with his come is making him feel pretty macho and possessive too. "Yeah, my dick put a baby inside you," he says, rubbing his thumb against her clit so she stifles a little noise. "You wanted it so bad you dragged me into that bathroom and wouldn't even let me get a condom." He slides one finger into her, practiced and fast, his finger slipping in deep so Amy gasps a little. She looks so hot with her cheeks flushed like this, glaring at him all furious and turned on. "You think we should tell the kid he was conceived 'cause his mom got Selina elected and that made her so horny she jumped up on a bathroom sink and spread her legs?"

"Shut up," Amy says, breathless, and Dan adds another finger, grinding the heel of his hand against her clit the way she likes, so she gives a strangled moan. He moves his other hand to her boob, rolling her nipple between his fingers and watching it harden up, Amy's breathing coming faster as he finger-fucks her slow and teasing. He leans down to suck on her breast, sliding the flat of his tongue over her nipple as he works a third finger into her, and Amy moans, but an annoyed moan this time, even as her hands go into his hair. "Goddammit, you fucking asshole, would you just fucking fuck me already?" she says, furious like when she yells at Republicans, and somehow that gets Dan even harder than thinking about her swollen up with his baby. 

He can't help looking up at her and grinning, and then she's tugging him on top of her, impatient and bossy, insisting on him moving so fast he can barely slide his fingers back out of her. "Yeah, you want that cock in you again?" he says, propping himself up with his hands so he's not crushing her, feeling a little bit like he should be careful of the baby even though he knows that's not a thing. "Didn't get enough earlier, huh, I knew that two weeks you were holding out on me was killing you."

"Ugh, you wish," Amy says, but she's spreading her legs with his hips nestled between them, the tip of his dick sliding against her, Dan teasing her and not quite pushing in yet. And whatever she says, he knows it really was driving her crazy -- that's the longest they've gone without having sex in ages.

Dan slides his cock over her clit, feeling how slick she is, until Amy groans in frustration. "Fuck you," she says, and reaches down for his dick herself, pressing it into her so Dan grins and leans down to kiss her. "God, don't fucking kiss me, hurry up," she says, but she totally kisses him back, so he gives her what she wants and shoves into her, fast and easy, burying himself inside her. She feels so slick and hot and good, perfect like she always does, and Dan feels like he could come already. "Finally," she mutters against his mouth, and he laughs and then they're fucking, him pulling almost all the way out and then shoving in again hard, Amy grunting and fucking him back.

"Harder, goddammit," Amy says, grabbing his ass to pull him in deeper, and Dan snorts but speeds up so she groans and closes her eyes.

"Yeah?" he murmurs, and she wraps her legs around his waist, pulling him in deep, and he can tell she's getting close already, her face all screwed up, reaching down to rub her clit as he moves inside her.

"Yeah, don't fucking stop, you fucking asshole, God, right there," she says as he angles in just right, and then she's just moaning, and it's so fucking hot watching her get undone like this, he never gets tired of it. "Faster, dammit, Dan," she says, and he goes even harder, pounding into her by now, and she must've been so turned on before from him dirty-talking about getting her pregnant because he can't believe how soon she's making noises like she's right on the brink.

He wants it to last forever, but she comes in like ten more seconds, squeezing down on his dick, making the loudest, porniest sex noises, and Dan can't help himself, speeding up so it's all wet disgusting noises of him fucking her and then he comes too, so hard the echoes of it ripple up his back, as hard as he's come in forever. 

"Oh my God," he says when he's finally ridden it out, sweaty and exhausted, pressing his face against her shoulder, feeling like his heart rate's never going to go down.

"Fuck," Amy agrees, still panting for breath, and Dan can't help laughing against her skin. "Goddamn fucking shit."

"I can't believe you're going to be someone's mom," he says.

Amy groans, sounding actually pained. "Don't remind me," she says, and somehow Dan just feels so weirdly happy, he doesn't even understand it.

**

Amy starts getting morning sickness about a week later, and it's pretty bad. The third time she has to step out of a meeting to throw up in one afternoon, Selina, irritated, says, "What's wrong with you? Are you pregnant or something?" Selina clearly doesn't think this is at all a possibility, but Amy gives it away by looking stricken. Selina's jaw actually drops. "Amy!" she says, obviously appalled. "Are you fucking kidding me? Whose is it?"

"Hey!" Dan says. He knows Selina thinks this is a fake publicity marriage and doesn't know for sure that they've also been sleeping together, but come on, it's not like Amy's been sleeping with anyone else. Um, right?

"Dan!" Amy hisses, as if he was the one who just gave something away.

But Dan's a little distracted, because Selina's turned her glare on him. "Dan, you did this?" Selina says in her most dangerous voice, taking a step toward him.

Dan inadvertently takes a step back. "Um…" he says, glancing over at Amy, but she gives him a 'you're on your own' look. He guesses she's still blaming him for the pregnancy, like it's not more her fault than his.

Gary has, of course, not taken the temperature of the room. "You're having a little baby?" he says, beaming all over his face, one hand reaching toward Amy's stomach even though he's too far away to be able to touch her. "Oh my God, that's so exciting!"

Dan has never been more grateful for Gary, because Selina turns her death glare on him. "What?" Gary says. "She's married, why isn't it exciting?"

But this just makes Selina turn her glare back on Amy. "It isn't exciting," she says, "because it's incredibly irresponsible. And I'd like to know how exactly Amy plans on having a baby while she's the chief-of-staff to the sitting president."

"Well, it wasn't a plan," Dan mutters, about to sell Amy out on her inability to just take a fucking pill at the same time every day, but before he can, Selina cuts him off.

"Shut it, Dan," Selina says, drawing her finger across her throat at him but still staring at Amy. "I don't want to hear about your inadequate birth control."

"Well," Amy starts, her eyes flicking to Dan like she's looking for an out. "I won't need much time off. I plan on coming right back to work -- I mean, my career is the most important thing."

"Uh huh," Selina says in that tone where she's still furious.

"We're getting an au pair, who'll be there around the clock," Dan says, jumping in to try to help. "It'll be like we don't even have a baby."

"That's the dream," Amy says, and it's so clear that she is not lying even a little bit that Selina relaxes and eventually goes back to talking about her economic plan. Amy still looks a little green with morning sickness and worry that she's going to get fired, but she manages to hold it together till the end of the meeting, when Dan follows her into the empty ladies' room to hold her hair back while she pukes. He should get a gold medal in the fake-husband Olympics at this rate, Jesus.

"Is this going to be how this whole pregnancy is going to go?" he says when she's finished.

"Probably," Amy says, wiping her mouth and slumping back against the side of the stall, looking exhausted. "Jesus, I'm already so bored with this fucking baby."

**

_**30 and a Half Weeks Later…**_

They're in the middle of a crisis -- they're always in the middle of a crisis, but this one is fucking awful, Pennington just pulled support from their health care legislation -- and Dan and Amy are rushing over to the Hill to fuck up his smug fucking face, when Dan notices Amy wincing as he holds the door for her.

"What?" he says.

"Huh?" Amy says, clearly engrossed in her thoughts about how she is going to destroy Pennington's life and career.

"You okay?" Dan says. "You were wincing, is something wrong?" Amy's hugely pregnant, and even though she gets so fucking pissed at him whenever he's solicitous about her health, he still can't help keeping an eye out for anything being the matter.

Amy makes a mild face, clearly still thinking about Pennington. "I'm fine," she says. "I'm just having some contractions."

Dan stops in his tracks. Amy keeps walking, and she's at least ten feet ahead before she finally concedes that he's not going to start walking again, and turns around, rolling her eyes. "Are you in labor?!?!" Dan says.

"Ugh, don't get hysterical," Amy says. "It's barely anything, it can wait until we deal with this."

Dan eyes her. "Uh huh," he says. "And exactly how close together are these contractions?"

Amy shrugs and mumbles something.

"What's that?" Dan says.

"None of your business," Amy says.

Dan takes a few steps forward so he's right in her face. "Amy," he says.

"Uh... I don't know, two minutes?" Amy says reluctantly, making an awkward face like she knows Dan's going to lose his shit.

" _Fuck_ you!" Dan says. "What, were you planning on having the baby in Pennington's office?"

"Jesus Christ, keep your panties on," Amy says. "It's not that big a deal." But another contraction clearly hits as she's saying that and she bites her lower lip.

"That's it," Dan says, taking her firmly by the shoulder and starting to steer her back towards West Exec parking. "We're going to the hospital."

"What about Pennington?" Amy says.

"Who fucking cares," Dan says. "Someone else can deal with it."

"Who, Mike?" Amy says. "Are you fucking kidding me, we can't --"

"AMY," Dan says, almost yelling. "I am going to call a fucking ambulance and the cops and security if you don't go to the hospital right now. Pennington's not going to get back on board if you shit a baby out on his carpet."

Amy rolls her eyes, but she lets him usher her towards his car, even though she's dialing her phone at the same time, getting on the line with Ben to tell him to fucking take care of this situation right the fuck now.

**

Once they're safely ensconced in a delivery room, Dan insists on taking a picture to document the experience, making Amy beam at the camera as he takes a selfie of the two of them. Hashtag secretary of labor. It's clever; labor, get it?

"Ugh, are you posting that?" Amy says, eyes back glued to her phone as Dan uploads it.

"Yeah, I'm livetweeting this," Dan says. "We're getting a ton of mentions. You can thank me later."

"Ugh, you're such an asshole," Amy says, but then grabs his hand and squeezes it hard as another contraction hits.

"Ow, Jesus," Dan says, but he holds it until the contraction's over.

"Serves you right," Amy says, going back to writing whatever super pressing emails she's working on.

Three hours of labor later, and Amy's been on her phone for two and a half of them. She doesn't actually put the phone down until, like, the baby is crowning and she has to focus on pushing, but even then Dan can tell she's pissed about it.

Then all of a sudden the baby's out and crying, and Amy mutters, "Finally," so quiet that only Dan can hear her, ensconced up by her head. The epidural must've worked, at least. She starts edging her phone back out from where she'd tucked it beside her in the hospital bed.

"Do you want to hold him?" the nurse says, holding the gross goop-covered squashed-looking wrinkly baby, already bringing him up because obviously the new mom wants to hold him.

"Nah, I'm good," Amy says distractedly, already reading a text message. Dan elbows her, hard. "I mean, _of course_ ," Amy says, overcompensating like crazy. Jesus Christ, she is the worst actor, but at least the nurse goes from looking really perturbed to relieved, putting the baby on Amy's chest, skin-to-skin. He's seriously so funny-looking, screaming his ass off, and he's got a full head of blond hair, and he's squirming and alive -- Dan can't believe that he and Amy made that thing, that he fucked Amy and now here's this person. It... feels weirdly powerful.

"Dad, do you want to cut the cord?" the doctor says. It takes Dan a second to realize she's talking to him. Oh, shit, the cord, that's disgusting.

"Um…," Dan says, but now Amy's the one glaring at him for not seeming enthusiastic enough. "Sure, of course," he says, hearing the overcompensation in his own voice. "I would love to cut the cord." The doctor hands him the weird medical scissors, and Dan manages to take them without making a disgusted face. "Wow, I mean, the miracle of life, right? This is just tremendous," he says.

"Dan, stop talking," Amy says.

"Yep," Dan says, and cuts the cord connecting Amy to his son.

**

They take the baby across the room to clean him up, but it's not long before the nurse is bringing him back. "Here he is, Mom," she says cheerfully, clearly confident Amy will want to hold him.

"Oh, heyyyy," Amy says, putting on her fake cheerful, likable face, the one that always looks like it might slide right off her skull. This time instead of the nurse just sliding him onto her chest, the nurse puts the baby in her arms.

Dan didn't think it was possible to look as awkward with a baby as Amy does, but she's holding him like the nurse just handed her a live squid. "Um," the nurse says. "You got him?"

"Uh huh," Amy says, her smile getting even tighter.

The nurse looks dubious, but goes back to the computer to do whatever charting, and Dan takes the opportunity to elbow Amy in the ribs. "Hold him like a person," he mutters through gritted teeth. This is not good for their image.

"I _am_ ," Amy mutters back. "It's hard, _you_ try it."

"Jesus," Dan says. "Don't you have, like, maternal instincts?"

"Those are fucking bullshit," Amy mutters. She honestly looks like she's about to drop him, or somehow fold him in half. Miraculously, he hasn't started fussing, but it's only a matter of time.

"Here," Dan says. "We need pictures anyway." He starts trying to adjust her arms to look a little more natural, trying to remember how it looks when people hold babies on TV.

When the nurse turns back around, she smiles when she sees Dan taking pictures of a now semi-maternal-looking Amy, the baby's chubby cheek smushed against her body, his little fist up by his temple. Now that he's cleaned up, he's actually sort of cute, in a pointy-headed kind of way. Dan can't believe his head is pointy because it just came through Amy's vagina. Childbirth is even more disgusting than he thought it was going to be, and he thought it was going to be fucking revolting.

**

Dan _really_ does not expect Amy to breastfeed, but when the nurse asks if they want her to send in a lactation consultant, Amy says, "Of course!" in that same fake-cheerful voice she's been using since the birth.

Dan blinks rapidly, trying to get his head around that, and when the nurse is out of the room he says, "Seriously?"

Amy rolls her eyes. "Jesus, Dan, do I want to look like a monster? Do you know how brutal the Mommy Wars have gotten?"

Dan stares at her. "The what?"

"God, douchebag, read a link I send you once in awhile, you're supposed to be managing my image," Amy says. When he clearly still doesn't know what she's talking about, she says, like she's talking to an idiot, "If you don't breastfeed, you hate your baby. I might as well just have aborted the thing, it'd pretty much have the same effect on my political chances."

Dan covers the baby's ears, even though the kid's only a half hour old. "Hey!" he says.

Amy snorts, going back to her phone. "Don't worry, I'm going to pump," she says. "My boob's not going in that kid's mouth after we get out of here."

**

A couple hours later, a lady with a clipboard comes in to get the information for the birth certificate.

"And what's the baby's name?" she says when she gets to that part of the form.

"Daniel," Dan says.

"Ugh," Amy says, rolling her eyes.

"Oh, you have another idea?" Dan says, making a face down at her. He's sitting on the side of her hospital bed, trying not to make it obvious that he's gawking at her breastfeeding. "Because I'm all ears."

Ever since they found out they were having a boy and Dan suggested they name him Dan Junior, Amy has been disgusted by the idea, but has yet to offer any other suggestion. She always seems to get hung up on calling Dan an egomaniac and accusing him of wanting to start a political dynasty. "What are we, the Kennedys?" she said the first time he suggested it. "Are we going to call him Dan-Dan?"

Amy chews at the inside of her cheek for a long moment, but finally she just rolls her eyes. "Ugh, whatever," she says, going back to her phone. "I don't care."

The lady with the clipboard looks taken aback by this whole exchange, but Dan smiles winningly at her and says, "Daniel. Daniel Egan."

Amy's typing on her phone, but she clears her throat. "Brookheimer Egan," she says.

"Sure, fine," Dan says. Whatever, he doesn't care either. "Middle name Brookheimer." He spells it for her.

"Hey, Danny," he says, stroking Danny's cheek once the clipboard lady has left the room. Danny's sucking away on Amy's breast, and his cheeks are crazy soft, all that newborn skin. Dan looks at Amy. "What's that feel like?" he asks, genuinely curious. He can't believe Amy's feeding this kid out of her body right now, like a cat with kittens.

Amy makes a little bit of a face. "I don't know, weird," she says.

"Yeah?" Dan says.

Amy looks down at the baby, her face still with that dubious expression. She looks like she hasn't even really thought about how it felt till now, focused on her phone, trying to block it out. "Yeah, it's way too intimate," she says. "I don't like it. I don't know this baby that well."

Dan laughs. "Yeah, come on, kid, buy a girl a drink first."

**

Amy falls asleep early -- the birth must've taken more out of her than she admitted. Danny's sleeping in his bassinet next to Amy's bed, and it's only 9 pm, so Dan's sitting in the chair in the dim room, looking through their instagram and twitter feeds to see how the narrative of the whole day came together. The baby is going to take them to the next level, politically speaking -- image management is key, and he was so in the details over the course of the day that he didn't get a chance to look at the big picture.

The feed is weird to look at, though, having experienced the day as it actually was. Instead of seeing Amy on her phone, yelling at Ben about their meeting with the minority whip, it's all smiling pictures of him and Amy together, Amy holding his hand, Amy looking down at the baby in her arms with a look on her face that actually passes for maternal. Dan holding Danny against his chest, Amy watching Dan with the baby, looking like she might be crazy about both of them. They look like this idyllic, in-love, happy suburban family, like they might as well be in a baby food commercial -- it's almost fucking creepy how good it is. Dan's expecting to just feel psyched about how well he put this narrative together, but instead he feels a little weird, deep in his chest, some feeling like nostalgia, even though nostalgia is fucking idiotic as an emotion so Dan never feels it. And anyway, you can't be nostalgic for an experience that never actually happened.

Besides, that family in the pictures looks so fucking boring. That perfect blond wife would never have leaked a story to Jonah to bring down both Jonah and the Maddox campaign in one fell swoop -- Dan doesn't even know how he could get it up, married to some sweet milquetoast like that.

**

Amy goes back to work two days after giving birth, limping a little but pretending she's fine and she doesn't have fucking stitches -- God, childbirth is _disgusting_ \-- and after that they fall into a nice routine with the au pair. Elsa's great with Danny, and he loves her, fucking cries when she leaves the room. Danny goes to daycare during the week, so Elsa can take some classes at George Washington, and then Elsa takes care of him in the off hours and overnight, so Dan and Amy can work late and sleep without having to worry about it, keeping Selina happy. It's really a perfect situation -- Dan doesn't know why parents are always talking about how much work this is. Having a kid is great -- the kid is cute, more so as he gets older and gets a little bit of a personality, and Dan can play with him after work if he feels like it, then hand him back to Elsa when he's done, and his life goes on the way it always has.

Plus, the baby is amazing for their careers. Dan set up a youtube channel for baby videos, and their instagram is through the charts now that it's full of Danny and his fucking Aryan-perfect blond hair and blue eyes -- Dan doesn't know why more politicians don't do this, because people are already talking about when Amy's going to run for office, like her getting elected is a foregone conclusion. Dan is a fucking brilliant career manager, is what this just goes to show. Even his dick knows what it's doing.

"All right," Elsa says on a Saturday morning the week after Danny's first birthday -- which was a fucking bonanza for publicity, by the way, they got a fucking spread in _People_. "I packed his bag for you." She hands Dan the blue diaper bag with the elephant on it, the one Dan picked out because it looks good in pictures. She starts counting items off on her fingers. "Diapers, snacks, two changes of clothes, extra wipes. Sunscreen and his hat. Make sure he wears it and put much sunscreen on him, since you're going to be outside, though it's October."

"Sure, sure," Dan says. He doesn't know why Elsa always insists on giving them the rundown on what to do with Danny, like they have no idea what they're doing. Jesus, they look after him every Saturday from ten to noon, it's not like they're amateurs.

"Remember he's frightened of giraffes," Elsa continues. They're taking Danny to the zoo -- excellent for photos, and since their Saturday family time is aimed at increasing their social media presence, that's important.

"I know," Dan says, even though he didn't. Jesus, giraffes? The fuck? He starts putting on the baby Bjorn -- people love dads carrying babies. He always gets a bunch of mentions on twitter about being a DILF when he makes Amy take pictures of him with Danny strapped to his chest, and if Amy ever divorces him he is going to make the most of that with the ladies, he can tell you. He raises his voice a little. "Hey, Ames, you ready?"

"Hold your fu-- effing horses," Amy calls back. Not swearing in front of the baby is the worst part of having a kid, especially now that he's old enough that he can kind of understand them, and fucking babies are always listening. It's like living under the KGB. Dan really misses back when Danny was two months old and basically a lumpy potato you could swear over till the fucking cows came home.

Dan rolls his eyes, but goes to pick Danny up to put him in the baby Bjorn. Danny chuckles, raising his arms as Dan reaches down for him -- he's a ridiculously cheerful baby, considering his parentage. If Dan hadn't seen him actually come out of Amy, he'd wonder if he was really her kid. "Hey, buddy," Dan says. "You ready for the zoo?"

Danny makes some happy babbling noises, and Dan kisses him on the head, smiling at Elsa. She smiles back, a little tentatively. "Don't worry about a thing," Dan says. "We'll take good care of him."

Elsa never seems convinced that Amy and Dan aren't going to somehow get Danny killed when they take him out -- fucking Swedes, man. So paranoid.

**

The next night Amy's sitting up in bed reading some PDF on her iPad while Dan's in the bathroom getting ready for bed, trying to talk to Amy about which senators might flip on their gun legislation through a mouthful of toothpaste. Amy's clearly not listening to him, saying, "Uh huh," vaguely when he pauses, but whatever. He walks back into their bedroom bare-chested, just in his pajama pants, thinking about whether he can seduce some sex out of her, and flops down onto his side of the bed. "Hey, Ames," he starts, reaching over to poke her in the leg, but then there's a knock at the bedroom door.

He and Amy both stare -- Elsa never knocks at their door, but it's not like there's anyone else in the house. "Come in?" Amy says after a second, making a face at Dan like, what the fuck?

The door swings open, and it is Elsa, but she looks terrible -- her face is so white it's almost green, tense with pain, and she's bending over with her hand on her abdomen. "Oh my God, are you okay?" Amy says, that note of alarm she gets when someone might need something personal from her, more grossed out than actually worried.

"I think I need to go to emergency room," Elsa says. Even her voice sounds pale. Fuck.

Dan would normally rather have his balls cut off than take someone to the hospital, but he immediately sees that his options are do that or stay home alone, at night, with the baby, and he has a knack for finding the lesser of two evils. "I'll take you," he says immediately.

Unfortunately Amy has the same knack. "Uh, no," she says. "I really think I should take her, Dan. That's so sweet of you to offer, though."

Dan drops his voice to an angry whisper so Elsa can't hear. "I can't stay here," he says. "What if Danny cries or something?"

"What makes you think _I_ would be better in that situation?" Amy hisses back.

"Well, you're a wo--" Dan starts, before he realizes he's a fucking idiot and cuts himself off, but it's too late.

"Oh my God," Amy says, looking disgusted. "You are such a fucking sexist. Now you're definitely staying."

Dan groans and drops his head back against the pillow. Goddamn it, what is the matter with him?

"I'll take you," Amy says cheerfully to Elsa, who is clearly only keeping it together by a thread. Dan's a little alarmed when she doesn't even give him any instructions for taking care of Danny while they're gone, just nods and starts limping to the front door with Amy trailing behind her. Fuck -- she better not be dying. That would be so fucking inconvenient.

Amy shoots him a shit-eating grin over her shoulder as she ushers Elsa out the door, and then Dan's alone in a quiet, dark apartment with a baby. Jesus, it's like a fucking horror movie; Dan would frankly prefer to be locked up with an ax murderer. Shit, is he supposed to, like… do anything?

With some trepidation, he goes into Danny's room to check on him, walking as quietly as he can, prepared for anything and half expecting disaster. But there's not a peep from Danny's crib, and when Dan tiptoes over to look, Danny's fast asleep, sprawled on his back with his hands above his head for some reason. So… good. That's good. Dan guesses he… doesn't need to do anything? What does Elsa normally do at night?

He tiptoes out again -- but shit, how's he supposed to hear if Danny wakes up? Didn't they buy some fucking ludicrously overpriced baby monitor at some point?

He finds the baby monitor in Elsa's room and takes it back to his and Amy's, feeling like a goddamn parenting genius for figuring this out. He sets it up on the nightstand, hearing the low buzz of static and silence from Danny's room, and prepares to sleep like a baby himself, knowing he'll wake up if he hears anything.

Or that's the plan, anyway. Instead he seems to be lying awake with his heart pounding, jumping every time a floorboard creaks before he realizes it's just the familiar night sounds of an old building, which he's never particularly noticed before. He feels like he's losing his fucking mind.

Even after he falls into an uneasy sleep, he wakes up every half hour, his ears straining for the baby, and when he's asleep it's so light it's barely like sleep at all. It's a fucking horror show -- do most parents do this all the time? What the fuck? How does anybody hold down a job?

The phone rings at 5 am, making Dan almost jump out of his skin, he's sleeping so lightly. "Ames?" he says into it, heart pounding, somehow with the ridiculous fear that she's going to tell him Danny's dead, even though obviously he would be the one making, not getting, that call.

"Guess who needs emergency surgery," Amy says, sounding incredibly put out.

"Oh, Jesus," Dan says. "Are you fucking kidding me?"

"Her fucking appendix burst," Amy says, voice dripping with disgust. "They're taking her into the OR now."

"Fuck," Dan says. "Fuck. Do you have to stay with her?"

"No, her cousin or something is coming," Amys says. She sounds pretty exhausted. "I'll be home in like an hour."

"Okay, good," Dan says, and then a horrible thought hits him. "Wait, fuck, who's going to get Danny ready for daycare?"

Amy gives a longsuffering sigh that somehow communicates that she thinks he's a fucking idiot.

"Fuck, us?" Dan says. "Shit. How, uh, how long does it take to recover from appendix surgery?"

"I'm guessing longer than a couple of hours," Amy says.

"No, I mean, a week, a month? The fuck are we supposed to do in the meantime?"

Amy groans. "Fuck," she says. "I know. I just -- don't fucking panic, we'll figure something out."

**

Dan is pretty fucking close to panicking when it's 6:30 am and they should be headed to work, but instead they're arguing about whether or not they can call the au pair agency to get a sub or something while Elsa's recovering. "I don't think it works like that," Dan says. He was the one largely responsible for hiring Elsa, so he knows a lot more about it than Amy. "We were on that waiting list for six months, it's not like they have fucking spares floating around."

"Well, Jesus, it's worth a try," Amy says. "Then, I don't know, couldn't we try finding a babysitter on craigslist or something?"

Dan stares at her. "Uh, yeah, I don't think it's exactly going to play well if we hire a child murderer on craigslist and then they murder our child."

Amy rolls her eyes. "You're so fucking melodramatic."

He's about to really lose his temper at her, on edge from getting so little sleep, when a little whimpery cry comes out of Danny's room and he and Amy look at each other with wide, horrified eyes, suddenly remembering that they are the only ones here, solely responsible for taking care of Danny and getting him to daycare. Fuck. This is a fucking nightmare.

**

"Oh my God, he shit himself," Amy says, holding Danny up by his armpits, out and away from her, like some kind of Lion King presentation scene if the monkey had found the cub utterly repulsive and the cub had been screaming. Obviously their no-swearing-in-front-of-the-baby rule has gone out the window in the face of the dire circumstance of actually having to care for the baby.

"Uh, yeah, he's a _baby_ , Jesus," Dan says. "So change him."

"I don't fucking know how to change him!" Amy says. "You change him! When I got pregnant and you were so fucking gung-ho to have this fucking baby, you fucking said that you'd take care of it if the nanny was off."

"I didn't fucking _mean_ it," Dan says. The caterwauling coming out of that brat is giving him the worst headache -- he can't think. God, he misses Elsa. Danny is so much nicer to be around when you can play with blocks with him for ten minutes and then hand him off when it gets boring or he starts screaming or there's shit anywhere.

"Dan!" Amy says, and she looks so close to losing it that he caves and takes the baby, though he gives Amy an eyeroll as he does, before wrinkling his nose at the stink coming off Danny's ass.

"Jesus," he mutters, and heads off toward the changing table, hoping to God he can figure it out. He's seen Elsa do this a couple of times, but he's pretty sure every time he has he's been yelling at her for fucking something up, so it's not like he was paying attention to the process.

Danny stops screaming when Dan lays him down on the changing table, so at least _he_ knows what's going on, tears shining in his big blue eyes, his face red. "Okay, that's right, buddy, we're going to take care of this," Dan says in the most soothing voice he can muster. He's pretty sure even a baby can tell that it's fake. Jesus, how is he even supposed to get this kid's clothes off?

Luckily he finally notices the snaps on Danny's onesie and undoes them with a sigh of relief. "See, Daddy knows what he's doing," Dan says. Amy, passing by the doorway at that moment, snorts. Dan glares at her. "Don't listen to your mother," he says.

Oh Christ, now he has to get the diaper off -- this thing is like a shiny plastic Fort Knox, and Danny's whimpering like a little bitch. Babies are the worst. "Hold your fu -- zzy horses," Dan says, narrowly catching himself. He finds the tab and starts trying to wrench it apart. When he gets it, he feels triumphant for a brief moment until -- oh, Jesus, there's shit in there. He wants to vomit.

Somehow, somehow, he manages to get the diaper off Danny and into the trashcan thingy for diapers, then wipe Danny's butt with some wipes, which Danny doesn't like at _all_ , his little limbs flailing so hard he almost punches Dan in the face. "Hold _still_ , dam--sel," he says, narrowly catching himself again. Jesus Christ, he's going to have a heart attack. Oh, God, he got a little shit on his thumb -- fuck! fuck! He wipes it off as fast as he can, skin crawling -- God, he is going to have to take a thousand showers after this. Where is Elsa? Surgeries only take a couple of hours, right?

You'd think getting the diaper off would be the end of it, but then he has to get the clean diaper _on_ , which is somehow even more impossible, and Dan feels like tearing his hair out by the time he can finally snap up Danny's onesie. Danny looks a lot happier, at least, his face back to its normal color, him sucking on his fingers contently, watching Dan with big eyes like he didn't just put Dan through the most harrowing experience of his life. "There you go, buddy, better, right?" Dan says. God, it's 7 am and he's already exhausted. He picks Danny up, carrying him out to show Amy, but instead of being suitably impressed Amy says, "He's not dressed yet? We have to take him to daycare in like 20 minutes!"

"Jesus, I changed him and got shit all over me, I can't do everything!" Dan says. "I need a shower, you get him dressed." He shoves Danny at Amy and heads to the bathroom before she can say no.

Over the past three years of living together, Amy and Dan have gotten into a real morning routine, stepping around each other like clockwork; Dan makes the coffee while Amy's in the shower, Amy does her makeup while Dan gets dressed. Everything goes smoothly to get them to work on time without anyone having to put much thought into it. It's nice.

This morning is the opposite of nice. Danny gets food all over himself when they try to feed him breakfast, so Dan has to put him in a whole second outfit, which must be why Elsa gets him dressed _after_ breakfast, like, would it have killed Elsa to let them know that before she sauntered off the hospital?! At least Dan dresses him better than Amy did, a tiny Ramones t-shirt, jeans, and tiny Converse sneakers, all of which Amy says make him look like a hipster douchebag, because she has terrible taste. And then they're just running around frantic, trying to figure out what the fuck he needs for daycare, and what the fuck to do about the rice cereal he got in his hair (they wipe it off with a paper towel -- there's no fucking time to give him a bath, even if they knew how), Dan and Amy sniping at each other more than they do when Amy's fucked up something at work that Dan actually cares about. It's basically the worst morning of Dan's life, and they get Danny to daycare half an hour late, which means they're an hour late to work, bustling in in the middle of a meeting. Selina is furious.

"Where the _fuck_ have you two been?" Selina says. She's looking them up and down like she's considering the most painful place to stab them, and when Dan glances at Amy he suddenly sees how rumpled she looks. Her blouse is actually a little untucked on one side. Dan slips a hand over to tuck it back in as surreptitiously as he can, and Amy moves her arm to let him.

"Our nanny's appendix burst last night," Amy says, still breathless from how they ran over here from the parking lot. This is the worst fucking day. "We had to take her to get emergency surgery, and then take the baby to daycare."

"You two actually took care of a baby?" Mike says, grinning like an asshole.

"What's on your shirt?" Ben says, squinting at Dan's chest. Fuck. "That's not piss or vomit or anything, is it?"

Panicky, Dan looks down, and fuck, there is a big splotch right in the center there. When he looks at it a little closer, though, it's just rice cereal, thank God. "No, just baby cereal," he says, starting to take his tie off so he can change. Thank fuck he keeps three spare shirts at work.

"Baby cereal," Mike says, clearly so delighted by this turn of events. "This is so surreal."

"It's humanizing," Ben says. "I don't like it."

"It will not happen again," Amy says to Selina, clearly as terrified as Dan that they're about to be fired on the spot. "We will find a temporary replacement. It is not going to interfere with anything."

"Oh yeah?" Selina says, her voice dangerous. "And who's picking the baby up from daycare tonight?"

Amy winces. "Well, Dan," she hedges. Dan makes a little noise of protest, why is _he_ the one who has to pick him up, but Amy elbows him hard, so he shuts up.

"And what time is that?" Selina says, her voice calm and level and terrifying.

"Um," Amy says. "Well. Five." That is a good two hours earlier than they leave the office on a good day.

Selina takes a breath, her fury palpable.

"But it's just today!" Amy says, fast. "We will resolve this, I promise. It is not going to be an issue."

"It better not be," Selina says, but at least she changes the subject to how fucking terrible she thinks the speech Dan wrote is, so that's an improvement.

**

Dan has to skip a meeting with some oil lobbyists to go pick Danny up, which is half frustrating and half something of a relief, because those fucking wastes of space don't deserve his time anyway, but also, Jesus, leaving work to pick up his kid? He feels as fucking useless as a stay-at-home mom. Though he does make sure to tweet about it, since there's nothing more politically helpful than being a loving godddamn father all involved in his kid's life or whatever the fuck.

When he gets to the daycare, the motherly-looking woman at the door looks surprised and confused to see him. Dan guesses they get to know who usually picks the kids up -- he and Amy had to sign some release to say that Elsa could get him. "Hi," he says. "I'm here for Danny Egan?"

"Are you on the list?" the woman asks doubtfully. "Have you picked him up before?"

"No, but I should be on the goddamn list," Dan says. The woman looks a little scandalized, and it takes him a second to realize it's because he technically just swore. "I'm his father? _Dan_ Egan?" He feels a weird twinge of something like guilt that he's such a stranger in Danny's everyday life, but he pushes it down -- it's not like _his_ father was so involved in his life, and he turned out fine.

The woman looks apologetic, and behind her, Danny drops the block he's chewing on and starts crawling towards Dan with a wide grin, so delighted to see him it almost gives Dan an emotion for a second. He would say, almost made leaving work early worthwhile, but it really doesn't come close. But at least it's something. "Hey, slugger," Dan says, scooping him up and giving the woman at the door a look, like, _see_. "You ready to go home?" Danny burbles something unintelligible and giggles, putting a sticky hand on Dan's cheek. Ew.

**

Amy gets home around the time Danny needs his bath -- he got covered in some kind of noxious carrot-puree when Dan tried to feed him dinner, and he was disgusting even before that. Dan didn't know babies had B.O., but their kid smells, and the back of his neck is gritty, what the fuck is that about? How do you even get the back of your neck dirty?

"You have to help me give him a bath," Dan says, by this point so frazzled by his two hours of single fatherhood that he could shoot himself in the face. He was about to yell at Amy for taking so long to get home, but she must've left early to even get home now -- from how long the evening has felt, Dan assumed it was about 10 pm, but yeah, just two hours alone with the baby. Unbelievable.

"You can't do it by yourself?" Amy says, wrinkling her nose, even though she obviously came home early to help spot him.

"Jesus," Dan says, "you're lucky I could feed him by myself, you can't just dump the kid on me and expect me to do everything!" Great. He's turning into his mother -- that may actually be a verbatim quote from his own childhood. Danny pulls at Dan's ear, laughing again -- this fucking kid, why is he so fucking happy? It's obnoxious, is what it is.

Amy looks at the two of them for a second, Dan in his oldest, grossest sweats, his hair probably mussed like crazy from how Danny keeps grabbing it, baby food smeared on his shirt. Roly-poly Danny is just wearing his diaper because his skin is easier to wipe off than clothing. "Yeah, okay," Amy says finally, her face softening a little -- so yeah, Dan must look like a crazy person. "I'll help. Just let me change first."

Dan starts running the bath while they wait for her, collapsing to sit on the lid of the toilet seat with Danny on his lap as the tub fills. Danny settles back against him happily, playing with the toy Dan brought in for him. Dan feels like he could fall asleep right here, his eyes closing too long at each blink. How is a goddamn baby more exhausting than dealing with the whole Senate of the United States?

He must look pretty wrecked because when Amy comes in the bathroom in her t-shirt and jeans, she smiles a little and scoops Danny up.

"Hi, baby," she says, in an actually friendly voice. "Mama's here." Danny grins, his arms waving happily, grabbing at Amy's face and making some unintelligible talking noises.

Amy's gotten way better at holding Danny since he was born -- their Saturday family time aimed at increasing their social media presence as a happy family has at least gotten her practice at pretending like she's an involved mother. It's always weird watching her hold him, because he looks just like her, all blond and blue-eyed with Amy's wide nose and sticking-out ears. Dan doesn't know how those fucking recessive genes overpowered his, but whatever. The kid's got Dan's chin, though -- and it's weird to look at a person who actually combines him and Amy. Kid's going to rule the world someday.

"You ready for bathtime?" Amy says to him. She sits on the edge of the tub, fumbling for the tabs on his diaper, but is having as much trouble with those goddamn things as Dan was earlier today.

"Here," Dan says, leaning forward to help -- at least he can use both hands. God, he's so relieved Amy's home.

"Thanks," Amy says as he gets the diaper off. "Um, he's not going to poop in the tub, is he?"

Fuck. Would he…? He wouldn't… would he? "He better not," Dan says, eyeing Danny. That kid is a tiny poop terrorist, Dan doesn't know how they're supposed to live like this. "If he does, you have to scoop it out."

Amy just laughs, probably because they both know that she'll make Dan do it, and he'll cave, for some unknown reason.

"All right, Danny-o," Amy says, and plops him down in the tub, where Danny laughs and immediately starts splashing in the, like, two inches of water. "Uh… how are we supposed to do this?" she says to Dan.

Now that Amy's home, Dan's relaxed enough that his exhaustion's really taking over. He shrugs, feeling like all his muscles are giving out, too heavy to move much. "I dunno," he says. "Is there baby soap or something? Doesn't he have bath toys I'm always stepping on?" He looks around, and finally sees a little basket of them on the floor next to the toilet. He grabs a boat and brings it over to sit on the side of the tub next to Amy. "Here, buddy," he says, handing it to Danny, who takes it from him and then drops it in the tub. Whatever. "How was that meeting with Treasury?" he asks Amy.

"Ugh, Martinez is such a son-of-a… um, person," Amy says, after a look at Danny, who is totally trying to get her attention so he can show her the boat. "Uh huh, I see that," Amy says to him, in the fake-nice voice she uses when someone she doesn't want to offend is trying her patience. "It went okay," she says to Dan. "We should follow up with the Fed to make sure it doesn't fall off the radar."

"Yeah," Dan says. Now Danny is handing him the boat. "Thanks, buddy," he says, taking it from him. Danny's face immediately crumples. "Jesus, you want it back?" Dan says, handing it back to him and rolling his eyes. Little Indian giver. And yeah, he fucking knows that phrase is racist. "Did you ever hear back from SecDef Turner?" he asks Amy, reaching for the baby wash that is apparently sitting on the side of their tub. Who knew? He squirts it onto a washcloth.

"No, he's totally stonewalling us," Amy says, rolling her head around on her neck like she had a really long day. She leans back against the wall behind her as Dan starts to rub the washcloth over Danny's closest arm.

"That guy's such an ass--inine piece of work," Dan says. Amy's obviously trying not to laugh, and he can't help grinning back at her a little sheepishly. Fucking parenting.

"Here," Amy says, reaching over to take the washcloth from him to run it over Danny's back, where it's easier for her to reach than Dan. Their hands brush as she grabs it, and it's such an everyday kind of touch, one they've done a thousand times -- and for Christ's sake, he fucks her like every other day -- but somehow it feels a little charged. Maybe it's just because it's so weird to be bathing a baby with her, acting like a family when no one is watching.

Out of habit, Dan's thinking what the pictures would look like if a photographer was here, standing in the doorway -- Dan and Amy sitting on the side of the tub in their old clothes, framing Danny in between them, splashing away, soap bubbles on his soft baby skin. Amy touching the baby like she likes him, his blond hair a shade lighter than hers, Dan and Amy both looking tired but relaxed. It'd be a good picture. There's no photographer right now, obviously, but Dan should probably at least take a picture of this on his phone, get some mileage out of it -- he's never posted a bath picture before because it never occurred to him and Amy to ever give Danny a bath.

So yeah, he should definitely take that picture, but it feels like a lot of effort to get up to get the shot, and Amy's knee is touching his, and she's complaining about the speech Selina blew earlier in the week that they're having to do damage control on, and Danny keeps babbling at him, and it's just kind of nice to sit here for a little bit with them, pour water over Danny's limbs to get the soap off, think about whether they're brave enough to try to wash his hair. He figures he'll take the picture in a second, any minute now, and it's not until Amy's in the other room putting Danny to bed that he realizes he forgot to take any pictures at all.

**

Dan's mindlessly watching TV, so exhausted he should really just go to bed, but in that stage of exhaustion where he's too tired to do it -- the thought of even moving is too overwhelming, much less brushing his teeth and putting on pajamas.

Amy comes in from putting Danny down looking about as destroyed as he feels and collapses on the couch next to him, her tiredness throwing her aim off enough that she ends up sitting right next to Dan, sagging into his side. He had been sitting with his arm along the back of the couch, so now she's basically cuddled up to him with his arm around her, tucked against his side in the completely normal way that Dan is willing to bet that Amy has never sat with any guy. It's weird, and it feels strangely good, the tired weight of her warm against his body.

"Oh my God," she says, groaning. "What a day."

"He go down all right?" Dan asks. He's surprised Amy offered to put Danny to bed -- she said it was only fair after Dan picked him up from daycare and gave him dinner, which it is, but he's still surprised she sees it that way. He moves his arm down a little, so it's really around her, and instead of that making Amy realize how they're sitting, she just moves a little closer, adjusting so they're more comfortable. He doesn't know what's gotten into her.

"Yeah," Amy says. "Jesus, _Pat the Bunny_ is a boring book."

Dan laughs a little, letting his head rest back against the couch cushions. He's hitting that mellow stage of tiredness where everything just seems slow and easy, heavy warmth moving into all his limbs. His thumb seems to be stroking Amy's shoulder, and she's strangely not objecting.

"What're we going to do with him tomorrow?" Amy says. She sounds beaten down, but not as frantic as Dan would expect, more resigned than anything.

"Shit," Dan groans. They haven't had a spare minute to think about getting a substitute nanny or even a babysitter. "We at least need a babysitter for after daycare closes."

"Yeah," Amy says through a yawn. "Ugh, do you know any teenage girls?"

Dan snorts. "Um, no. Would you want me to?"

Amy lets out an amused breath. "No. That reminds me, please don't fuck the babysitter when we find one, that would be bad for my image."

"I'll try to restrain myself," Dan says dryly. Who even has time for affairs, anyway -- he doesn't know how Clinton did it.

"Hey, doesn't Mike have teenage stepsons?" Amy says, twisting a little to look up at him.

"You want those degenerates to babysit?" Dan says. "I wouldn't leave a plant in their custody, are you kidding?"

Amy scrunches up her nose. "Ugh, I'm too tired to think," she says. "Anyway, it wouldn't help us for tomorrow, it's too late to call anyone."

Dan shrugs, yawning hugely. "Maybe we can stagger our shifts?" he says, once he can talk again. "Like, I go in early while you get him to daycare, then I leave work early to pick him up while you stay?"

"Mmm, yeah, maybe," Amy says. "That could work."

They subside into comfortable silence. Dan's got the Daily Show on to see what fucking Jon Stewart says about Selina tonight, and he watches for a minute as Stewart talks about the Speaker of the House's appalling pork amendment. "Ugh, fucking Davis," he says, about to say something to Amy about the incompetence in Congress lately, but when he looks down at her, she's asleep on his shoulder, her hair falling in her face.

Dan's seen Amy sleep a thousand times -- he's been sleeping in the same bed as her for almost three years -- but it's weirdly endearing at this moment, her face all smoothed out and young looking, more vulnerable than she looks when she's awake. Her profile looks just like Danny's. Dan tucks her hair behind her ear so it won't annoy her in her sleep, her skin warm under his hand, and thinks about how he should wake her up to steer her to bed -- she's going to get a crick in her neck sleeping like that, and they both need a decent night's sleep if they're going to go through this whole exhausting parenting thing again in the morning. But he'll just give her a minute first, her hand resting on his chest, her head heavy on his shoulder. He turns the sound down on the TV so he can just barely hear it, his wife asleep against his side, their son asleep in his crib in the other room. This has been the weirdest day.

**

The shifts do work, at least. Selina makes some little cracks about it, clearly annoyed, but she doesn't fire them, and they get a little better at the routine of feeding and dressing and bathing Danny, even though they're still both exhausted all the time. It's only supposed to be two weeks until Elsa comes back to work, but then she gets complications, and it's going to be another week, and then that week turns into two, and in the meantime parenting has distressingly become a habit.

A month in, Dan's in the Oval Office first thing in the morning with Selina, waiting for Mike to show up for their meeting about the speech in Oregon. Gary's just brought Selina a coffee.

"So how's that publicity marriage of yours?" Selina asks Dan idly. "Guess it's turned into the real thing, huh?"

Dan just finished showing her the latest pictures of Danny -- she wasn't very interested, but somehow he couldn't quite help himself -- so the question isn't totally out of the blue. "Hmm?" Dan says. "Oh, no, it's still a fake marriage, it's not for real."

Selina gives him a look like she thinks he's bullshitting her. "How do you figure that?" she says dryly.

"I mean, we're not in love," Dan says. "We want to kill each other most of the time."

Selina looks like she thinks he's an idiot. "Uh, yeah, you're married," she says, like that's what marriage is. "When we were married Andrew and I wanted to rip each other's faces off when we weren't, you know, ripping each other's clothes off."

"Well, yeah," Dan says, "but you and Andrew hate each other. You got divorced."

Selina is still looking at him like he's brain-damaged. "Yeah, but I'm talking about when we were first married," she says. "We were crazy about each other." When Dan still looks dubious, she gestures at the picture of Danny still up on his phone. "You and Amy are fucking, obviously," she says, like Danny's the proof of that. Which he is, but which is still a gross way to look at a baby. "You own a house together. You have a kid. So what part of your marriage is fake, exactly?"

Dan knows there's a flaw in her logic somewhere, but he must be exhausted from the baby because right at this moment he can't quite find it. But he knows they're not really married -- like, Jesus, you're supposed to be in love with each other when you're married, right, not just in love with your own careers?

Selina's got her eyebrow raised at him, and Dan doesn't know what to say, his stomach sinking a little. "Maybe," he says doubtfully, because it's not like he could argue with the president, even if he could think of an argument right at this moment. But what does Selina know, anyway? She and Andrew were a trainwreck. She has no idea what actual marriages are like, so no wonder she's confused about him and Amy.

"That's what I thought," Selina says, and changes the subject. Dan tries to put the whole thing out of his mind -- it's crazy anyway, Amy's not really his wife -- but for some reason the conversation keeps niggling at him.

**

A week or so later, he and Amy are at a fundraiser, Dan in his tux, Amy in the same backless blue dress she wore to the inaugural ball the night he knocked her up. It keeps giving Dan a semi every time he catches a glimpse of her across the room, and Amy keeps smirking at him like she knows it.

He ends up at the bar, drinking a gin and tonic and talking to a guy who's about his age, one of Kleinman's staffers. It turns out he has a kid the same age as Danny, and he's been married about the same amount of time that Dan and Amy have been fake-married. Which makes him the perfect person to prove that Selina's wrong about thinking Dan and Amy are married for real -- Dan's going to find out all the ways this guy's marriage is different from whatever his and Amy's weird thing is.

"So, do you and your wife have date night and shit?" Dan asks, after they've talked about how exhausting one-year-olds are for awhile. Dan and Amy would never have date night in a thousand years -- Amy would laugh in his face if he ever suggested it.

John snorts. "Yeah, right," he says. "On our anniversary, maybe. You?"

"No, uh, same," Dan says. John's answer is unsettling -- Dan and Amy totally went out on their anniversary too -- and yeah, it was mostly so Dan could tweet about it, but it was actually kind of fun. Nice to have a night out without the kid, and Jesus, has he actually become a person who thinks that phrase in all seriousness?

"Right?" John says. "I don't know how anybody could do date-nights, not when you have a kid and this job. When would you find the time?"

"Yeah," Dan says slowly.

"I mean, Beth and I haven't had sex in months," John says. "I guess it's just being married, right? I mean, the kid's exhausting, and, I don't know." He takes a swig of his beer like he's depressed about it but it's just normal to stop having sex once you're married.

"Right," Dan says, but his mouth has gone a little dry. He and Amy have had sex three times this week. Are they having more sex than people who are actually married, who got married because they were into each other? "Um, but, I mean, you guys are in love, right?"

John snorts, looking at Dan like he's crazy. "Uh… I guess," he says, in a tone that means no. "I mean, don't get me wrong, I love her and shit. But it's not exactly all romantic at this stage in the game, with a house and a kid and a mortgage and constant fights about who takes out the trash."

John is looking at Dan like Dan should definitely know that if he's married, and Dan clears his throat, rushing to overcompensate. "Yeah, I mean, I hear that," he says. "Nothing romantic about me and Amy either." Which, Jesus, is absolutely true, so it's not even overcompensating. Shit. He takes a long sip of gin and tonic and tries not to panic. Are he and Amy really married? How long has that been going on? And has Amy known all this time? He feels like she probably has -- it's not like Dan's the fastest to catch on to, you know, human emotion and love and marriage and whatever other bullshit. Amy probably thinks he's an idiot. Shit, he's married with a kid, and that's just his actual life, nothing fake about it.

Jesus Christ. Though now that he's thinking about it, he doesn't know what he thought his actual life was if this whole thing is fake.

Across the room, Amy's trapped in a conversation with the German ambassador, shooting looks at Dan like she needs him to come rescue her. He finishes his drink, says, "Excuse me," to John, and goes over to save her.

"Sorry to butt in," Dan says to the ambassador, smiling his most charming smile. "But I think it's time I danced with my wife." It feels a little weird to say that now, realizing it's not even a lie. She's been his actual wife all this time. Jesus fuck.

As he ushers her out onto the dance floor, his hand on the small of her bare back, Amy says, "You're shameless." She means him calling her his wife so ostentatiously, but she's also smiling like she's kind of into it, and shit. He wishes she'd told him they were really married. He feels so out of the loop.

**

Once he knows they're married it's so fucking obvious he wants to punch himself in the face. He talks to Amy's mom on the phone about their Christmas plans and Danny's gifts, because they always do Christmas at Amy's parents' house, and Amy's mom loves him, whereas if Amy tried to talk to her about the Christmas plans they'd get in some kind of weird passive-aggressive bullshit that Dan doesn't fully understand. He and Amy get in a fight about whether they should try to find a new daycare or not, and whether it's worth it to try to get a new babysitter, and then the dishwasher breaks and they get in a fight about who's going to leave work for a couple hours to let the repairman in. It's all stuff that's become so common in his life that he wouldn't even think twice about it if he hadn't had this realization, because they are _so fucking married_ he can't believe it. Jesus Christ, Amy must've noticed this years ago, he's such a fucking idiot.

Amy gets home late one night that week, after Dan's already reading in bed. She comes in their bedroom in her work clothes and stocking feet, and collapses on her side of the bed face-first with a groan. "Long day?" Dan says, putting his hand on her head out of habit.

"You could say that," Amy says. "The Joint Chiefs can suck my dick." She lifts her head to look at him. "Danny already asleep?"

"Yeah," Dan says.

"Mmm," Amy says, sounding disappointed. It's weird how they've actually gotten into the habit of seeing Danny every day. Amy sits up, groaning like the movement is taking a lot out of her, and starts unbuttoning her blouse. "God, I'm so keyed up," Amy says, shrugging the shirt off her shoulders and undoing her bra. Her body's still a little softer than it was before she had Danny, her boobs a little bigger, stretchmarks on her stomach. It's sort of hot, especially knowing he's the one who did that to her, and Dan can't help staring like a weirdo, even though they've apparently been married for _three years_. "You wanna do it?" Amy says, smirking at the way he's looking at her.

"Yeah, okay," Dan says, even though he's so tired from feeding Danny and putting him to bed by himself that he's not sure he can move.

Amy stands up to get her skirt and underwear off while Dan gets out of his pajamas, and then Amy's naked and crawling on top of him, moving slow and tired, sprawling on his chest so her boobs are pressed against him. Dan kisses the top of her head, his left hand landing on her back while his right moves down to slip between her legs, rubbing her clit idly, sliding along her folds to feel how wet she already is. Amy makes a pleased little noise in her throat and spreads her legs, moving up so his cock is between them, and then she just reaches down to slip him inside her, all casual habit, because they've done this a thousand times, the feel of her so familiar. She's tight and wet around him, starting to move on top of him, just grinding into him slow and exhausted and perfect, so he barely has to move.

Before Elsa went MIA with her fucking appendix, Dan and Amy used to fuck all energetic and mean, ducking into closets at work sometimes to get off quickly between meetings. Since they've been looking after Danny, they're just so tired -- the only secret thing they've done in closets is that Dan's watched the door of one a couple of times while Amy's grabbed a ten-minute nap.

This sex is so different from the way it used to be, quiet and comfortable, Amy squeezing down on him and moving all languid, Dan rubbing her back and her clit, moving his hand around to cup her boob, rolling her nipple the way that always makes her groan, her sucking on his earlobe the way he likes, and it builds fast and familiar, them so efficient at sex by this point, way too well-acquainted with each other's bodies. Amy comes first, groaning and biting down gently on his ear, her squeezing around his dick, still riding him slow and hard all the way through it, until Dan comes too, wet and thick inside her, the two of them going limp and sweaty against each other, Amy tucking her face into his neck.

Dan kisses the side of her head, and Amy makes a satisfied little noise and then says, "Did you call the plumber about the shower drain running slow, by the way?"

"Yeah, they're coming by on Friday," Dan says. He's going soft inside her, and she shifts so that he slips out of her. He laughs a little, it muffled in her hair.

"What?" Amy says.

"You think that was the most married sex we've ever had?" Dan says.

Amy snorts and gives him a weird look. "I guess," she says, like she hadn't thought about it. He guesses that's probably because she's known they're really married for a lot longer than he has. They've probably had sex that married a thousand times and Dan was just too dumb to notice.

**

That night Danny has a nightmare, sad wails coming through the baby monitor at two in the morning. Amy groans from beside Dan, burrowing her head into the pillow. "Your turn," she says.

"Fiiiine," Dan mumbles, still half-asleep, and pushes himself up to stumble toward Danny's room.

Danny's standing up in his crib, looking incredibly tragic, tears streaming down his face, and he reaches out for Dan when he sees him. "Hey, kid," Dan says, and picks him up, Danny's little arms going around his neck as his cries immediately start quieting down, apparently sure Dan will fix everything. Sometimes babies are really good for the ego.

Dan knows he should probably comfort the kid and put him back to sleep in his crib, but that sounds like it'd be a lot longer before Dan could go back to sleep, so he just takes Danny back to their room. "You wanna sleep with me and Mommy?" Dan says as they come in, Amy rolling over to look at them as the door opens. Dan climbs back into bed, putting Danny between them, Danny sucking his thumb and curling into Amy's side, looking insanely content. Dan puts his arm over both of them absently, everything dim and quiet. "Night, kid. Night, wife," he says.

Amy mumbles something that sounds like, "Why are you being weird?" but Dan's already mostly asleep.

**

The only thing about realizing that they're really married is that it makes Dan start feeling self-conscious about how he's supposed to act. Like, apparently he's someone's actual husband, so he should probably, like… try at that, right?

The problem is that he has no idea how a husband is supposed to act. It's not like his parents had such a great marriage, and even if they had, he'd kill himself before he would model himself after his dad in any way whatsoever. Unfortunately that doesn't leave him with a lot of options. Doubly unfortunately, Mike walks up behind him at an inopportune moment.

"Whatcha reading?" he says, leaning over Dan's shoulder to look at his laptop screen. Dan alt-tabs as fast as he can, feeling his face start going hot, but it's already too late, judging from Mike's delighted laugh. "Oh my God!" he says. "Were you really reading an article titled, 'Five Steps to a Stronger Marriage'?"

"No!" Dan says, but his face is burning and he knows Mike can see it.

"You and Amy in a rut?" Mike says. "You want to get the passion back?"

"Fuck you, Mike," Dan says.

They're not in a rut -- things are fine. But Dan still feels like maybe he should be doing something else, like, whatever a real husband would do, so after he's out running errands the next afternoon, he brings home some flowers for Amy. That's, like, a thing, right, wives like that, you're supposed to thoughtfully bring her flowers for no reason?

When he walks in the door, she's pacing around the living room with Danny on her hip and her cell phone in her other hand, yelling obscenities into the phone at some sap of a junior staffer. Danny's sucking on a pacifier with his head resting against Amy's shoulder, looking sleepy and content. Sometimes Dan's pretty sure that they're raising a kid who is only going to feel like things are normal if someone's yelling "Fuck," into a phone right by his head.

"Fucking make it happen!" Amy says into the phone, then hangs it up and mutters, "Goddammit." She still hasn't noticed Dan there in the doorway, and so when Danny starts squirming, wanting to get down, she just sets him on the living room floor, and it's only when she turns that she finally sees Dan there, the dozen roses in his hand. 

"Hey," he says. "Everything okay?"

"Yeah, it's just fucking Applegate. I think I put the fear of God into him," Amy says, her head still obviously in the phone conversation. Behind her, Danny's crawled over to the coffee table and is pulling himself up to stand. He hasn't started walking yet, even though most of the other kids his age at daycare have, which aggravates Dan when he thinks about it.

"Good," Dan says, and comes over to kiss her cheek. When he pulls back he holds out the flowers. "These are for you," he says.

But instead of looking delighted, her eyes narrow, and she looks between Dan and the roses. "Um, what?" she says suspiciously. Which, now that he's faced with Amy instead of the generic wife in his head, he honestly doesn't know what he was expecting her reaction to be, because this seems about right. He's an idiot. "Why did you get me flowers? Did you fuck somebody else or something?"

"What?" Dan says. Now _that_ , he really wasn't expecting her to say. " _No!_ What the fuck, why would you think that?"

But Amy still looks suspicious. "Because why would you get me flowers?" she says. "Our anniversary's in…" But she trails off, obviously not remembering.

Dan rolls his eyes. "October," he says. "But Jesus, I didn't fuck anyone, who else would I have fucked, anyway?"

"I don't know, Rachel Lew," Amy says without missing a beat.

Dan blinks, not recognizing the name at all. "Who?"

"Remember Mary King's staffer? In that meeting last week?" Amy says, obviously expecting him to remember, but Dan is drawing a complete blank. "She sat next to you. Remember, she kept laughing and touching your arm?"

Dan has literally no memory of this -- where was he? Is she making this up? "Are you sure?" Dan says doubtfully. All he can remember about that meeting is some nerd dude in glasses and a cheap suit being a total douchebag about their legislation.

Amy rolls her eyes, but at least she does look vaguely mollified. "Okay, fine, you didn't fuck anyone," she says, and Dan thinks they're about to let the whole thing drop, thankfully, but then Amy looks back at the flowers and looks suspicious again. "So if you didn't fuck anyone, why the fuck did you buy flowers?"

Dan feels his face going faintly hot again -- God, this really was a stupid idea. He shrugs. "I don't know," he mumbles. "I just, like, thought it would be nice, I guess."

"You thought it would be nice," Amy repeats, in a tone of voice like this is the most ridiculous thing she's ever heard. 

"Yeah, I don't know," Dan says. "I just -- you know, trying to be a good, uh, husband or whatever." His face is burning by now. Jesus, he's a fucking idiot.

Amy laughs, still looking at him like he's being so weird. "Uh, okay," she says. She finally takes the flowers from him like she's going to go put them in water, but she also rolls her eyes again, smirking a little. "You know, Dan, if I wanted someone I had to pretend to be nice around, I wouldn't have married _you_."

Dan laughs a little because, yeah, okay, true. He reaches down to pick up Danny just to have something to do with his hands, Danny's arm going around his neck, Danny showing him the toy horse he was playing with. "Hey, wait a minute," Dan says, suddenly noticing the actual pertinent part of this conversation. "You thought some girl was hitting on me? Were you -- Jesus, were you _jealous_?"

"No!" Amy says, now going faintly pink herself.

"Oh my God," Dan says, laughing and following her into the kitchen where she starts putting water in a vase. "You were totally jealous!"

"I was not," Amy says. "I was just _noticing_."

"You don't want me to stick my dick in anybody else," Dan says, enjoying himself more than he's enjoyed himself in quite awhile. Danny's grabbing his ear and pulling on it right now and Dan doesn't even care.

" _No_ ," Amy says. "I don't care. I mean, I'd be _mad_ , obviously, because we have an agreement and because it would be bad for my political career, but that's not being _jealous_. It's totally different." She puts the now-full vase on the counter and sticks the roses in it, the most angry flower arranging that Dan has ever seen.

"You wanted to shoot that Rebecca girl in the face," Dan says. He's aware he's practically chortling and he just doesn't care. "You looooooove me." Danny reaches out for Amy, starting to whine, wanting her to hold him.

"Rachel," Amy says, taking Danny from Dan absently, their hands touching as Dan hands him over. Danny immediately beams and settles into her. "And shut up. I do not." She brushes Danny's hair more into place, arranging it over his forehead. "Don't be disgusting in front of the baby."


	2. Epilogue - October, 2040

Dan and Amy usually have breakfast together in the residence if they're both in DC, first thing before he heads over to the Oval Office. It gives Amy a chance to put her two cents in on whatever he's working on, helping her stave off the boredom that comes with being a former president. She keeps having to do humanitarian work, it's a fucking nightmare. 

This morning he comes into the dining room in a particularly good mood for no reason that Amy can see -- those fucking Senate hearings on the scandal with his appointees at the DoJ are still going fucking terribly. But Dan's humming and smiling and he kisses her on the top of the head, setting some kind of jewelry box beside her napkin.

"What's gotten into you?" she says. He's so annoying when he gets like this. 

"Happy anniversary," he says, sitting down in his place at the table.

Oh, fuck, is it already their anniversary again? She thought she'd talked him out of celebrating that. "Dan," she says, about to tell him to cut this shit out, but he interrupts her.

"It's kind of a big one," he says. "We have to acknowledge the big ones, right? Thompson is going to have to field questions about what we did for it at the next fucking press briefing."

Is it a big one? God. "Oh," she says. "Yeah, I guess it's, uh… fifteen years?" She tries to say it declaratively, like she knows, but it comes out more like a question in spite of all her efforts.

Dan gives her a disgusted look. "Danny's twenty-three," he says. "Remember his college graduation? He's not that much of a fucking genius."

"Oh, fuck, that's right," Amy says. She tries to think what anniversary that makes this, but it sounds unbelievable, that can't be right --

When the pauses stretches out, Dan says, "Twenty-five," looking a little rueful, but not exactly surprised at this stage in their marriage. "It's our twenty-fifth anniversary."

"Shit," Amy says. That is -- Jesus, has she actually been married to Dan Egan for twenty-five years? How did that get away from her? She meant to divorce him after ten years at the very latest, but whenever she thought about it it seemed like it would be a lot of effort.

"And they said it'd never last," Dan says dryly, taking a sip of orange juice.

Amy laughs a little. "For a publicity marriage, it's worked out okay," she says. "I was president, you're president."

"Yeah," Dan says. "That's all we wanted out of this thing, right? I guess it's served its purpose."

Amy laughs. "Yeah, guess we should get divorced now, there's no reason to keep this charade going."

Dan laughs too, but he's eyeing her with a look on his face Amy can't quite read. "True," he says. "Of course, then you'd have to commute any time you wanted sex, that'd be inconvenient."

"Yeah, and holidays would be awkward," Amy says. "We'd probably still have to do them together anyway, you know, for the kids."

"Very true," Dan says. "And if we got divorced they'd probably hate us even more than they do now."

Amy laughs. "Good point," she says. "So what are you making me do for this anniversary? Just dinner reservations, right?"

Dan smiles in the way that always makes her nervous. "You'll see," he says, which better not mean he is making her take a helicopter anywhere romantic.

"You know I hate when you do that," Amy says, gearing up to get in a fight with him, and the subject of their eventual divorce doesn't come up again. Maybe they'll do it next year.


End file.
